Hub nonprofit Project MEMA extends outreach in Tanzania

The four students being sponsored by Project MEMA went on a safari at Arusha National Park. Thomson Safari sponsored the trip. (Photo courtesy of Project MEMA)

Primary school students sponsored by Project MEMA on Safari. Asha, Gifty, Beatrice and Emanueli are the first people in their families to see safari animals in person because of the high cost to attend a safari tour in Tanzania. (Photo courtesy of Project MEMA)

When Project MEMA launched in 2010, the Boston-based nonprofit supported one government nursery school in in Moshi, Tanzania with the mission of enriching children’s lives by promoting education and healthy living. Since then, the organization has grown in scope and influence.

Project MEMA has supported its first school by providing lunches, school uniforms and school supplies to the 80 students and completing an enhancement project where the organization worked to replace all chalkboards throughout the school, replaced tables and chairs in the porridge room where the students eat lunch and renovated the playground at the school.

“It’s difficult for the teachers to teach and the students to learn if the actual school itself isn’t really up to par,” said Amy Wendel Project MEMA founder and director.

The organization’s expansion in the last several years has included supporting a second nursery school in Moshi, the Rau Children’s Center, and sponsoring four primary students’ education and two secondary students’ education.

The partnership with the second nursery school happened after Wendel paid a visit to the school and saw it was in need of major renovations.

The Rau Children’s Center, formerly Watoto Rau Nursery School, was founded by a group of volunteers who, like Wendel, visited Tanzania and wanted to help in some way. However, the group had trouble maintaining the school after returning home from their visit.

“It’s kind of [a] common theme for people to go to [Tanzania] and kind of see a situation and want to help and have the best intentions but they come back to the U.S. and it’s difficult because their lives sort of takeover,” Wendel said. “And then maybe six months later what they thought they were going to do, it just dies.”

After taking over the 20-student school, Project MEMA renovated the entire school, adding new floors, brand new desks and a playground and building a bathroom.

The organization also had murals painted on both the outside and inside of the school.

Rau Children’s Center is tuition-free and Project MEMA provides a teacher for the school and gives uniforms and school supplies and has replaced the students’ flour, milk and sugar-based porridge with one that now includes ground millet and peanuts for substance.

This year, Project MEMA began looking at what the organization can do to support students after they have left nursery school.

Supporting a primary school would have been impossible because of the high costs, so Project MEMA has selected four of its nursery students to sponsor in primary school.

When Project MEMA started the sponsorship, which pays for the student’s tuition, uniforms, school supplies and footwear, the students were in a government school.

The organization has now found boarding schools for two of the four students, Emanueli and Beatrice, and is looking to have the other two students, Gifty and Asha, placed in boarding school by 2015.

Wendel described the primary school education in Tanzania as “pretty poor.” The teachers often don’t even show up to classes.